Bradley: Classic evokes frozen memories

Hey, Ma, I'm going to the pahk! That was the refrain from the first time the ice was solid enough to stand on until the warm weather inevitably returned the Frog Pond back into its natural state.

BOB BRADLEY

Hey, Ma, I'm going to the pahk!

That was the refrain from the first time the ice was solid enough to stand on until the warm weather inevitably returned the Frog Pond back into its natural state.

But from December to maybe mid-February, that's where my friends and I could be found every day after school and every weekend.

Winter Classics were a daily event.

With the Boston Bruins and the Philadelphia Flyers getting ready to drop the puck somewhere in the vicinity of Fenway Park's second base on Friday, it has evoked a lot of memories of days spent outside in the freezing cold, and without a care in the world.

The promos for Friday's game refer to the game being born outside, and the NHL has been smart enough in recent years to cash in on that nostalgia. Buffalo's Ralph Wilson Stadium two years ago. Chicago's Wrigley Field last year. And this year, Fenway Park. Oh, and Yankee Stadium waits in the wings.

But beyond the marketing, ticket prices and scalpers, it's still about a hockey game, but (ideally) in the cool crisp of the outside air. The fickle Boston weather, of course, might rain (literally) on the Classic parade.

Rain, snow, sleet, fog or any other weather condition never stopped us as kids, though. And the most difficult part of a bitter cold January day was taking your shoes off and putting your skates on. We had it down to a science, and speed was of the essence.

But the freedom that a pond hockey game afforded you was the ultimate allure. There were no refs, no clock, and you made up teams by throwing your stick to what passed for center ice and then someone would divvy them up – one to the left, one to the right.

And two lucky ducks got to have their boots used as goal posts.

“We lived on the ponds,” said former Bruins player and coach Mike Milbury, who will be part of the NBC broadcast team on Friday. “The excitement was there because there was nobody to tell you where to go, where to line up. It was just mayhem. You played until you couldn't play anymore and were frozen. You maybe brought an orange and broke it open and had that incredible smell of the fresh cold air.”

Milbury grew up in East Walpole, and so did I. One of those ponds he was talking about, I suspect, was the same one my friends and I skated on – the Frog Pond in Bird Park – a couple of hundred yards from my house.

It was a source of pride to get to that pond first, and to be the first one with your skates on, the first one to step onto the ice, humming “Paree,” the tune organist John Kiley played when the Bruins stepped onto the ice at the old Boston Garden.

There were hazards, to be sure.

At the Frog Pond, there was a small river that fed into it, and the end where the river flowed into the pond never froze. It was water in motion.

Many a time, a player would try to save a puck from going into the drink, and both puck and player would end up under water. It wasn't deep, but it was funny.

One indelible memory is of a friend of mine rushing down the right wing with the puck when he got a little too close to the thin ice near the flowing river.

As he skated, the ice gave way, but he kept on going. It was as if he were on an escalator going down until all we could see was his hat floating on top of the water.

We pulled him out, but he drew the ire of the rest of us because it was our last puck.We also played Zamboni when snow covered our playing surface. We staggered our shovels and plowed the ice clean.

We played night games when there was a full moon. If there was snow on the ground, it helped with the lighting.

When we finally had enough we would walk up to the Laundromat next to fire station and toss our stuff into the dryer – our hats, gloves, coats – and sometimes Billy Boyden.

“The whole sense of playing outside is a sense of joy, pure freedom without any restrictions, no rules, no regulations,” Milbury said.

“Just go beat around a puck and try to put it in between two old boots and have some fun.”

One rule we did try to enforce was no lifting of the puck.

No one had on shin guards, so a lifted slapper to the shin was the gift that kept on giving. And of, course there was the ritual dropping of the gloves. These were the days of the Big, Bad Bruins and the Broadstreet Bullies, and Terry O'Reilly was a hero to us all – and someone had to play Dave Schultz. O'Reilly never lost a bout in East Walpole.

Friday's game at Fenway won't have the primitive aspects that we endured as kids. It is, after all, the National Hockey League, and it will be done professionally and it counts in the standings.

But most, if not all, of the players participating on Friday likely got their start on some frozen piece of water somewhere outdoors, and being outside playing hockey will bring out the little boy in these hard-nosed professional hockey players.

They'll likely allow lifting and they'll have actual nets to shoot at instead of someone's sneakers or boots.

And I get to say again what I haven't been able to in a long time.

Hey, Ma, I'm going to the pahk!

Night sports editor Bob Bradley can be contacted at 508-862-1152 or rbradley@capecodonline.com.